There are people who believe that a jeans company put out a TV ad for eugenics. I don’t. I can’t, not unless somebody writes a long article with quotes from court documents, unnamed former executives saying they were appalled, Ivy League dorm mates describing the owner’s disturbing wall posters, and on like that. A jeans company would need one hell of a backstory before it started paying money to promote Nazi ideology. From what I hear, the online busybodies slagging American Eagle all rely on the commercial’s wording. “I have good genes,” says Sydney Sweeney while having blonde hair and blue eyes, plus her chest that goes boom. The blonde hair and blue eyes give the game away, say the critics.
Or maybe the critics say the company’s being tone-deaf, not actively pro-Nazi. The gang’s just outraged that, in this day and age, they have to hear something that could possibly be construed as Nazi-favorable when our president already has us covered in that regard, thank you. Or maybe, no, they really say American Eagle decided to put a chunk of its ad budget behind eine Rasse hat den Rizz (which Google tells me is German for “One race has the rizz”). I don’t know which it is. I can’t finish any of the articles about the Sydney flap. I can’t even read the Twitter posts or Instagram comments or Mandible bites (that platform’s particular term for a brief verbal clump left online) that convey the complaints. I just know that the complaints exist.
There’s a jeans commercial making a pun on genes, it’s got a luscious blonde saying words, and people actually want to talk about those words and get worked up. This commotion goes off in the distance, and I feel like something dumb and loud’s being yelled two blocks away. The commotion’s over there but it tells me what kind of neighborhood I’m in, and boy, is it depressing.
Probably the ad’s the first one where the gorgeous being on display actually tells us how great she looks. She doesn’t just flaunt it, she boasts, and that’s gloating. Watchers can’t even buy something and pretend it’ll make them look like her—we’re talking genes here. Hence the anger, which the disgruntled then tell themselves comes from their outrage over bigotry. Or, again, maybe not. One thing I’m sure of: sorry about saying rizz. It works for the joke, so I won’t take it out. But I am sorry.
DVD corner. I heard good things about Community from three different people, and I don’t know a lot of people. But on checking out the first season, I’ve got to give it thumbs down. Clever stuff, written to a high standard for joke construction, but perky. Dan Harmon, the fellow behind the show, says he tries to live up to 30 Rock and Tina Fey with his scripts. I think he pulls it off, yet no pleasure results. On 30 Rock or Community the ball moves fast and well, adroitly; the viewer gets bounced along for recurring jokes, jokes within jokes, feints at recurring jokes, and so on. It’s a golden-hands display Chuck Lorre could never match, and we’re lucky network TV ever managed it. But Community shows a program can be smart (as they say in the comedy business) but still perky, and the perkiness kills.